How to improve air quality of our planet?

Air pollution is taking heavy toll in many countries and cities all across the world. This is the main reason why there is a large number of countries that have set new emission targets in order to improve their air quality, particularly in large cities.

But how to improve air quality when the number of cars in our roads, as well as global industrial activity, continues to grow?

The answer for this is cleaner technologies, with the emphasis on renewable energy.  Our industry is still heavily based on fossil fuels and as long as fossil fuels remain dominant energy sources we won't be able to stop environmental pollution.

Replacing fossil fuels with renewable energy sources is the best way to improve overall air quality of our planet, and leave our planet in healthy state for our future generations.

The main problem with this concept is that fossil fuels still have edge in costs over renewable energy sources, and many people still do not want to pay higher energy bills, even if this means less air pollution in their area.

The transition to renewable energy economy is therefore still not happening fast enough, even with the recent popularity of solar and wind energy. People don’t want to pay more for renewable energy and this issue is something that science will have to find the solution for, and as quickly as possible because the environmental condition of our planet continues to deteriorate.

Air pollution isn't happening only in Chinese cities, it is also a common thing in many cities of the western world, especially those with the high amount of daily traffic. To solve this issue we need cleaner cars on our roads, such as electric or hybrid cars. We could be also walking more or riding a bike than going everywhere with our cars. This is not only good to improve air quality of the area we live in but is also very healthy.

Countries also need to improve their monitoring of different air pollutants. The monitoring needs to be done more thoroughly and more frequently in order to determine the actual air quality in certain area, as well as possible changes in air quality which could lead to easier discovery of sources behind the (potential increase) in air pollution.

Without clean air you can forget about healthy life. If our environment is still regarded as second best when compared to industry then at least our health should be more important, or are we even ready to sacrifice our health for a few dollars more?